1. Technical Field
Renewable energy sources, and more particularly, recovery of energy from wind.
2. Description of Related Art
Wind energy recovery has a long history spanning many centuries. The uses for recovered wind energy include the milling grain, pumping water from sources, transferring water between source and use locations, and, more recently, the generation of alternating current electrical power.
In spite of recent progress in alternative energy technologies such as solar energy and wind energy, there remains a need for further improvement in these technologies in order to make them economically viable as compared to current energy sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear power. This has become even more evident with the recent major advances made in hydrofracturing technology, which have enabled the recovery of large reserves of shale gas and oil. Ideally, any improvements in these alternative energy technologies would be sufficiently significant to enable wind energy in a competitive business climate. With regard to wind energy in particular, what is needed is an improvement in the methods of recovering wind energy, which enables cost-competitive use of wind energy, either as an energy supply directly into the commercial AC power grid, or as a “specialty energy” source that supplies energy in specific but commonly encountered circumstances in a more reliable and cost-effective manner than other alternatives.